How Pro Industry’s e-Recruitment team attracts 5x more technical specialists in ⅓ of the time

Technical talent is hard to find. But any manufacturing business requires a constant supply of specialists to keep the processes running. Production workers, mechanics, process engineers – it’s mission critical for any production company in and around the Netherlands to fill these positions, fast.

The Rotterdam-based Employment Agency Pro Industry helps companies close that gap: They specialize in attracting and supplying quality technical candidates to their industrial customers.

But in a rapidly evolving market, Talent Attraction market leaders like Pro Industry have to move even faster. That’s why they set up a specialized e-Recruitment team to leverage digital channels. The result: Pro Industry has access to 5x as many candidates as their competitors.

In this article, we’ll share how Pro Industry set up their e-Recruitment for measurable success.

Small market, big challenge, fast movers

Operators, mechanics, and process specialists are crucial assets for the processing industry. That also means that these highly-trained specialists are under constant demand – from a relatively small amount of players.

For Pro Industry, it’s absolutely essential to always be top of mind with these candidates – as well as being able to address them when a job position needs to be filled.

"We’re operating in a small market, and many profiles are really hard to find, especially since we’re serving a small group of potential customers. We always want to be ahead of the game. So we wanted to know – how can we get in touch with this target group, fast?"

Yuri Wouda, Business Development Manager, Pro Industry

Digital channels: The new recruiting frontier

Digital advertising, especially on social media, sounded like the obvious answer to Yuri. Nobody else in the market seemed to use it. So Yuri and his team at Pro Industry followed their own ambition as the frontrunner – and tested these new channels.

But being on the forefront of innovation isn’t always easy.

While actively searching candidates always have a CV at hand, that wasn’t necessarily the case for a candidate attracted through social media. On the other hand, virality is baked into social channels, and suddenly, job positions were shared with other interesting candidates – a dynamic that just didn’t exist with job boards.

Different candidates

The initial results of Pro Industry’s job ads seemed promising. But Francis Mekhail and her team soon realized that another process was needed to work with social media job advertising.

Instead of just getting a CV, the team at Pro Industry had to move much faster and filter candidates more efficiently. The results spoke a clear language. That’s why they decided to set up a dedicated e-Recruitment team, with Francis in the lead.

"We had to adapt our process, but suddenly, we started to fill positions that we just couldn’t fill before. Now, we get approached because people just know that we can deliver the right results." - Yuri Wouda, Business Development Manager, Pro Industry

How Pro Industry set up their e-Recruitment team

“In the beginning, we didn’t have an e-Recruitment team. But the regular r ecruitment team had issues with that, because the whole approach needed to be so different”, says Yuri.

It’s crystal clear that a candidate is interested in a job position when they hand in their CV. But how does it work if they just fill out an online application form, or even just their contact details?

Yuri knew they had to turn to a different approach. With short attention spans, they had to be even more convincing.

A joint effort

They sat down and designed their new recruitment process. E-Recruitment and traditional recruitment needed to be partners, with dedicated teams and a dedicated process. A joint effort.

At the core of it: a candidate-centric Talent Attraction process, focused on personal conversations with the candidates that apply through social media.

This new, joint recruitment process was a huge success for Pro Industry. But a new challenge arose: How could they scale this process and improve the results? That’s when they turned to Wonderkind’s Talent Attraction Technology for help.

"We focus a lot on personal conversations in the recruitment process. It’s much easier to quickly call a candidate that filled out a form through Facebook. You get an instant insight if they’re a fit, and if they are, you can convince them personally." - Yuri Wouda, Business Development Manager, Pro Industry

How Pro Industry used Wonderkind to reduce their time spent on sourcing by 70%

Pro Industry has been working with Wonderkind since 2018. Every three weeks, they set up the most important vacancies in Wonderkind’s Talent Attraction Technology.

For that, they look at the USPs of each job and the salary. They make sure that the job is visible and attractive, and Wonderkind helps with suggestions along the way.

"I try to always write the vacancies from the candidate’s perspective. What are they looking for in a job? What do they want to see?" - Francis Mekhail, Manager E-Recruitment, Pro Industry

Lean setup: Wonderkind ads lead to Salesforce Landing pages

Instead of relying on an existing Applicant Tracking System, Pro Industry built their own ATS on top of Salesforce. An unusual approach, but it mirrors their e-Recruitment competency: Every new candidate is, at the end of the day, a lead that needs to be followed-up – just like in a traditional sales process.

The landing pages for every hiring campaign are built in Salesforce, and the entire process after this is carefully measured and adjusted by the team – just like in a regular advertising campaign.

This doesn’t only make their entire hiring funnel measurable – it also provides insights back to the Talent Attraction Technology, that can optimize the ad campaigns even further and attract candidates that are more likely to convert.

"In e-Recruitment, everything is about conversion." - Francis Mekhail, Manager E-Recruitment, Pro Industry

Quality candidates in less time

Especially in a specialized field like the processing industry, bullet-proof targeting is a necessity. Imprecise targeting means spending valuable resources on candidates that are no fit for the job.

Pro Industry leverages Wonderkind’s Talent Attraction Technology targeting and retargeting of the right candidates – fully automated through Artificial Intelligence.

This is especially useful for Francis and the e-Recruitment team with a large volume of job ads.

"I have much less work. It takes me about ⅓ of the time to set up job ads with Wonderkind compared to doing it by myself. And it really enables my team: Anyone who’s not experienced with advertising can suddenly create high-performing job campaigns. That really gives me peace of mind. Especially because my clients don’t care where their new hires come from – they just know that we deliver." - Francis Mekhail, Manager E-Recruitment, Pro Industry

Wonderkind Dashboard: The Recruiting funnel, all in one place

Francis and her team especially like the dashboarding functions within Wonderkind’s solution. Together with Salesforce, they can model their recruitment funnel down to every detail. How many candidates looked at each campaign? How successful was each ad? And how many hires did we get for which price?

"Our job ads are 100% performance and conversion driven. With our tough deadlines and specialized roles to fill, there’s no margin for error." - Francis Mekhail, Manager E-Recruitment, Pro Industry

Technology enables the team to scale

It’s not a secret that Pro Industry is absolutely leading in their market. No wonder that Pro Industry themselves are constantly looking to improve and scale their own team.

One area they don’t have to worry about is job advertising. “Because Wonderkind takes care of getting the campaign performance right, I don’t need to worry too much about getting it right myself”, says Francis Mekhail.

At the end of the day, I just look at the results and can focus on the things that are important: How can we create a genuine human connection? And here, the technology really makes a difference. - Francis Mekhail